Anita

This was something I scrawled in my sketchbook this morning. I’ve been reading about the neurological condition known as synaesthesia, which I found out about a few weeks ago. I’m interested by this all of a sudden because I have realised that most people can’t hear colours, but I think I might have been hearing colours all my life and I didn’t really think much about it. As far as I can remember, every time I hear music, especially certain types of music, I just perceive that particular song or tune as “being a purple song” or “being a yellow song” and this brings about lots of strong vivid colours and imagery in my mind. I had always assumed everybody did this – I was telling my mom about this last night and she just stared at me as if to say “what are you going on about?”

It sounds really mad, but it’s just always been normal for me. I’ve only read so much about this interesting phenomena. I’m not saying for certain I have this characteristic – it could be something else entirely. Maybe my mind just established neural links between certain colours and tunes as I grew up, I don’t know. I’m no scientist. I still find it fascinating!

But maybe this is why I’ve always found certain types of music to be really inspiring when I paint.

What are your thoughts on this Anita?

Joe